"Ock-Ock!" said the rather muffled voice. "OCK-OCK!" the voice repeated a little louder, but there was still no reply. The voice belonged to the irascible Matti the Magpie, who was carefully carrying a mug of warm hot chocolate in one wing with a chocolate biscuit balanced on top. In the other wing was a second biscuit and there was even a third held by his beak, which explained the muffled noises. It was quite the balancing act but Matti had quite a bit of practice.

He set the biscuits and mug down upon a little table, licked the crumbs off from his beak and looked at his large friend seemingly asleep on a rug beside the roaring fire. "Knock-Knock!" Matti repeated a little more clearly now the biscuit had been removed, but there was still no response. He was about to try to see whether his friend was just pretending to be asleep, when Mika the Moose replied, "I’m not going to answer, Matti!"

Mika's sudden response made Matti jump, causing him to knock into the little table… PLOP! The biscuit sat on top of the mug dropped into the hot chocolate. "Argh! No, my biscuit!" squawked the magpie, and he began to try to fish the soggy biscuit out with his beak. "Look what you have done, you silly moose!" complained Matti, but the moose continued to lay with his eyes shut on the rug.

Matti hopped up into his favourite red armchair, wiggled his bottom into its comfortable cushions and took a sip of warm biscuity hot chocolate. "Hmmph! Now you have to answer!" declared the bird stubbornly. "Knock-knock! Knock-knock! Knock-knock!"

"Oh, stop it now, Matti. I’m not in the mood for your games." The moose replied, trying to avoid opening his eyes and looking at the magpie. "And what are you in the mood for, Mr. Serious Moose?" asked the bird with a big smile. Despite himself, Mika couldn't help answering and even opened his eyes to look at Matti, "I'm in the mood for doing nothing. I just want to sit here in the warm and think."

"But, Mika, thinking is doing something… you are thinking, you are not doing something, and now you are talking to me, so your mood is also in the mood for talking and not just doing nothing!" Mika blinked a few times, shook his head, "All those chocolate biscuits are making you talk even more nonsense than usual."

The magpie was taking another large sip from his mug and had stopped listening to his friend. "So, Mika, Mr. Serious Moose, what is this very important thing you have to think about?" The magpie was definitely not going to leave him alone, so he answered, "Nothing!" The moment he spoke Mika knew he had made another mistake because the magpie started laughing. "Right, so you want me to leave you alone to think about nothing?" Matti continued to shriek with laughter.

Mika sighed to himself and then said, "Knock-knock… okay, who’s there?" The response seemed to work because Matti stopped laughing and looked into his friend's eyes. "Santa is not there!" whispered Matti, "Santa is not there!" Matti saw the look on Mika's face, "So you have noticed that Santa has vanished, too! Where is he?"

"I don’t know, Matti," Mika answered quietly. Matti hopped on to the arm of the chair and began to talk excitedly, "Nobody knows; that’s the problem, nobody knows. I have asked everybody, even the dwarves that clean the backyard, yet nobody seems to know anything. Except…" and he stopped talking.

Mika looked at him, "Except what?" The magpie looked at him like he knew something and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell anybody. "Oh come now, Matti, what’s the matter?"

"Now we want to talk, don’t we? Before, it was all 'leave me alone to think' and now it is all 'tell me, tell me!'" The magpie was pretending to sulk, staring out of the window. Mika knew that if he kept quiet the bird couldn't resist talking again. The wait didn’t last long.

"Except…" Matti paused and looked around to make sure that nobody else was in the room, "I think he has gone somewhere and they don’t want to tell us! It is a big secret!"

Mika didn’t say anything, but the truth was that he had been looking for Santa over the past couple of days and had the feeling that there was something nobody wanted to tell him. It was something that the master elf had said and others comments he had overheard in Santa’s workshop. He wasn’t sure. "Lori the breakfast elf told me Santa had gone to check the children on the Naughty List…"

"And you believed him?" Matti asked quickly, but Mika looked unsure. "You see? You see? You have doubts. I’m telling you there is something else going on! I just have a feeling something isn't right!" said the magpie, before drinking the last of his hot chocolate.

Mika stood up from the rug and stretched, "Matti, you know that your feelings always get us into trouble." However, this time Mika also had a bad feeling and wondered just what adventure was coming.